Diary: Eames exhibition

I will visit again before it closes, but first impressions are that the chairs were only a very small part of their extensive work in design, architecture, graphics, education. The Eames repertoire is bloody endless, and their energy awesome. The momentum of their trendiness was ably assisted by Frazier Crane, and if occasionally they come across as creepy precisionists, it is a small price to pay.

Quote: Ed McBain

'It was almost as if, secure
in the knowledge of her beauty,
she could allow her face
to be torn by agony.'

Description of Teddy Carella, by Ed McBain, 1926-2005

Diary: House of Lords

The vote in the House of Lords requesting the government delays its cuts to tax credits until a proper damage report has been compiled, seems fairly unimportant, just another scrapbook entry for the political spods. But it also seems like some kind of tide has turned when a government has managed to make enemies of the most establishment figures in society's very established establishment. Who needs a red coat to be a revolutionary?

Film: Suffragette

Why they put Meryl Streep on the posters I will never know. She was in the film for about 5 minutes, and unfortunately came over like a Bad Thatcher. It was Carey Mulligan's film, and she did a good job, as did her screen husband Ben Whishaw. Yes, it was very simple in a very simple and simplistic way. I am not sure some of the details regarding class did not totally squander any chance of SOD (suspension of disbelief). I find it hard to believe that women of the class played by Carey Mulligan's character would be as articulate as this particular laundry slave was. I half expected her to break into Milton at one point, so at ease with the spoken word was she.

Diary: Two paintings

Two pieces separated in time and place caught the attention of Billy Mann. For although they are quite different and by very different artists, they both seemed to inhabit a similar perspective

Arroyo (left) and Blake (right) 

Reading Pop Art: A Colourful History, by Alastair Sooke, I was introduced to a 1961 self portrait by Peter Blake (with badges), who is said to have been one of the key originators of Pop Art. The image was striking, and more so when on holiday in Mallorca recently I came across a 1993 portrait by Eduardo Arroyo, 2 Passage Dantzig in the Fundación Juan March. For some reason I came to see these two pieces as relations, part of an everlasting, ever growing family.

Film: The Martian

Man gets stuck on Mars.

Man grows potatoes on Mars.

Man grows potatoes on Mars using rehydrated human faeces as a fertiliser.

Man grows potatoes on Mars after inventing a device that makes water.

Assisted by a supernerd back on Planet Earth, the colleagues who left Man on Mars are able to return to 'bring him home'.

Yippeeeeeee!!!!!!!










* Please remember to return your 3D spectacles when leaving the cinema.

Diary: Prisons

Inside story: How a prison operates is a matter for the governor and the department of Justice. But, asks Billy Mann, shouldn't the taxpayer also have a say in the matter? 

You can't beat the system: If somebody wants to kill themselves outside a prison, the will to prevent them is minimal. Inside a prison, wheels and machines exist to prevent suicide.

As part of the rehabilitation I have been engaged in since suffering a stroke three years ago, volunteering has become a mainstay. I help in educational workshops and one of them is in the education block of an inner city prison. I have joined classes in which I offer advice on writing and editing to prisoners who are involved in making their own "in-house" magazine. After 3 sessions, I was required to undergo security vetting should I want to continue. And once I had been successfully vetted, I was required to attend a day's security awareness training. That took place yesterday.

For obvious reasons, I cannot go into much detail. When it comes to prisons in the UK, what happens behind the big wall and the barbed wire stays there.

So, the stories about the various grisly methods of self harming (eating razor blades, pulling out your eyes) will have to wait, as will tales of the latest synthetic drugs and the methods of delivering them into prisons from outside (drones are popular).

What I can mention are two impressions that stood out. The first is that the stated duty of care undertaken by the British state inside a prison is far greater than the duty of care it exercises outside in the community. If somebody wants to kill themselves outside a prison, the will to prevent them doing so is minimal. Inside a prison, wheels and machines exist to prevent suicide.

The second impression is that prison operate as closed systems. This is obviously a statement of the obvious, but the ways in which each system in each prison works is determined separately. They are all required by the department of Justice to meet certain requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, but beyond that and the ways in which they meet those requirements are determined locally. This opens the door to internal systems that play out beyond the scrutiny that might normally apply to other departments of state.

The question therefore arises as to whether the taxpayer, as the ultimate financier of these systems, should be entitled to oversee them in some way, either through the media or through some other form of representation.

Quote: Lanchester on Elon Musk